The Improvisers Breadline.

Tonight, while riding the bus north to catch a train to Evanston for vaudeville rehearsal, I had a thought, "This city isn't as good as it was when Ryan Gilmour was here."

I know how gay and pathetic it sounds to be a grown man, age 33, pining away for another grown man, but there you go. I liked having him here. I called him and we would hang out. Or he would call me and we would walk over to The Daily Grill for dinner. If I was tight on cash, he would cover me and I would try to get him back, when I was flush again. Sometimes we would just walk around the neighborhood and catch up on the gossip or pick movies apart. Good times.

Now, if I want to get a burger with him, I have to fly across the goddamed country.

So there's that.

But more than Ryan's absence, I'm feeling the absence of other displaced friends too.

Bob Ladewig is in Portland.
Corey Harrison is in Louisville, Ky.
Ron Temple is in Some Small-Ass Backwoods Town, Ky.
Reuben West is in Indianapolis, IN.
Mackenzie Baker is in Phoenix, AZ.

People that I used to see and enjoy, regularly, in this city are all gone, gone, gone. It's like there's this long line of improvisers, head bowed, standing in line to leave this city behind, to go somewhere else, to do something else. And that's sad.

As I write this, I am wondering how the old actors that I see around the theater deal with this? The weight of memories past and the insubstantiality of the current times. Do they wander around this city, looking at the changed storefronts and remember places where they used to get beers and shoot pool with their long-gone friends?

I remember this stuff from college. You come together, for a few brief years are a small family with all the good memories and the little dramas that cement you together. And then, one by one, people graduate or leave and go their separate ways. Disperse to the winds.

Part of me always thought that when I got to Chicago, that wouldn't be happening as often. This was a destination for me. The place I wanted to be. And it's such an extraordinarily good place, that I naturally thought that people would want to flock here too. And I guess that they did. For a time. For a while, it was good, and I had a strong family of friends again.

One by one, they all left. Dispersed by new winds. Grad School. Babies. Theaters To Be Opened. Families To Be Started. Things To Do.

I am happy to say that life is still good here. We enjoy the gravity and the spotlight of a major American city, but we still have open expanses of sky and horizontal sprawl and friendly people. Groceries are close by. The public transportation system (mostly) works. People you once knew and loved are getting married and having improv super-babies. Good Stuff, see?

As good as all of this stuff is, it was all better, when you were here.

I might need to avoid "going away parties" for a while.

Lately, I've been missing old friends.